What happened with reality blurred these turbulent 24 hours

If you checked in to realityblurred.com between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, you probably noticed some wonkiness. Or a lot of wonkiness. Or a fire of dumpster proportions.

My apologies. Here’s a brief explanation.

I switched servers, because my beloved, small but awesome hosting company was quietly sold to a larger company last year. The site was going to have to be moved anyway, and that seemed like a good opportunity to do something that’d been on my mind for a while: switch to a hosting provider that manages the server more intensely, thus minimizing the technical stuff I have to deal with.

That stuff is ideally invisible to you but consumes way too much of my time. After all, I’d rather watch TV and write about it than fiddle with server settings that I don’t understand.

The change was supposed to happen seamlessly in the background, and it did for my personal site, andydehnart.com, which you should browse whenever you have a few moments. However, there were several complications. One of them involved the site’s security—you may have noticed that, since last fall, all the pages here are secure, with the little lock icon appearing in your browser, meaning your connection to reality blurred is secure and encrypted (not that you’re doing banking here, but it’s something all web sites are being encouraged to implement).

The site was down for the last 24 hours while there was a flurry of communication between my new host, the company that I hired to move the site, and me—and the communication was not always great, especially when I was freaking out and asking for updates after not hearing anything for hours. I spent most of yesterday evening and this morning with my stomach in a knot, knowing it’d get resolved but hating the downtime.

It struck me as kind of like my experience with occasional rough turbulence on a plane: it can be terrifying when it happens, in part because everything’s out of my control, and then when I land everything’s fine and I forget all about it. So here’s to forgetting all about this!

I’m glad everything’s fine now, and I look forward to these pages being served to you in a secure and speedy way. Thanks for sticking with me and for reading reality blurred.

P.S. If you don’t visit the reality blurred home page regularly, but come here from social media or RSS or something else, consider visiting now, and perhaps adding a fancy bookmark to your browser so you can visit daily. Just right click on this and—whee!—easily add a bookmark: https://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/

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about Andy Dehnart

Andy Dehnart’s writing and criticism about television, culture, and media has appeared on NPR and in Vulture, Pacific Standard, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He has covered reality television for more than 18 years, and created reality blurred in 2000.

A member of the Television Critics Association, Andy, 41, also directs the journalism program at Stetson University in Florida, where he teaches creative nonfiction and journalism. He has an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing and literature from Bennington College. More about reality blurred and Andy.

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about reality blurred

reality blurred is your guide to the world of reality TV and unscripted entertainment, with reality show reviews, news, and analysis. It was created in 2000 by Andy Dehnart. He's still writing and publishing it today.

reality blurred is regularly updated with highlights from the world of reality TV: news and analysis; behind-the-scenes reports; interviews with reality TV show cast members and producers; and recaps and reviews of these reality TV shows, including Survivor, Big Brother, The Great British Baking Show, Shark Tank, The Amazing Race, The Bachelor, Project Runway, Dancing with the Stars, Top Chef, and many more.